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COT Report: Speculators slash commodity longs to 11-month low, gold remains dominant
Key points:
- Our weekly Commitment of Traders update highlights futures positions and changes made by hedge funds across forex and commodities during the week ending Tuesday, 5 August 2025.
- Dollar short covering extended to a sixth week despite emerging signs the recent recovery had run out of steam.
- Speculators slash commodity longs to 11-month low amid copper tariff flip-flop, OPEC+ production surge, and crop-friendly weather weighing on grains.
- Gold remains by far the dominant position, supported by weak US jobs report and potential Fed pivot towards rate cuts
Forex
Despite emerging signs of the recent dollar recovery had run out of steam, speculators extended their recent buying spree to six leading to a considerable amount of further dollar short-covering. Overall, the gross USD short versus eight IMM forex futures slumped by 38% to USD 7.1 billion, the lowest belief in a weaker dollar since April, with selling seen across all eight except the Mexican peso, and led by JPY, EUR and not least GBP after the net short jumped to near a three-year high. Another extreme emerged in AUD where the net short reached an 18-month high.
Commodities
In the week to August 5, several major developments drove positioning changes across key commodities. Trump’s abrupt reversal on copper tariffs triggered a 22% slump in New York prices, prompting funds to halve their HG copper net long. In energy, OPEC+’s continued production increases—potentially into a softening demand period—pressured crude oil, while fading tightness in the diesel market led to long liquidation in London and New York from recent three-year highs. Grains remained under pressure as favourable U.S., European, and Black Sea weather maintained strong crop prospects, reinforcing elevated speculative short positions across wheat, corn, and soybeans. Notably, soybean futures jumped 2.5% in early Monday trade after Trump urged China to quadruple U.S. soy purchases as part of efforts to cut its trade deficit with China. As of late July, US government data showed China, the world’s top buyer of soybeans, had yet to book any cargoes for the upcoming season that starts in September as tensions between the two sides linger. Overall, managed money accounts engaged in broad-based selling, with most of the 27 major commodity futures tracked seeing net reductions. The combined net long fell to an 11-month low of 540,000 contracts, valued at USD 107 billion. More than half of this nominal value came from gold’s 161,811-contract net long—which, in contrast to the broader trend, rose 13% last week as a weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report and potential dovish shift from the FOMC boosted September rate-cut expectations.
What is the Commitments of Traders report?
The COT reports are issued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the ICE Exchange Europe for Brent crude oil and gas oil. They are released every Friday after the U.S. close with data from the week ending the previous Tuesday. They break down the open interest in futures markets into different groups of users depending on the asset class.
Commodities: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap dealers, Managed Money and other
Financials: Dealer/Intermediary; Asset Manager/Institutional; Leveraged Funds and other
Forex: A broad breakdown between commercial and non-commercial (speculators)
The main reasons why we focus primarily on the behavior of speculators, such as hedge funds and trend-following CTA's are:
- They are likely to have tight stops and no underlying exposure that is being hedged
- This makes them most reactive to changes in fundamental or technical price developments
- It provides views about major trends but also helps to decipher when a reversal is looming
Do note that this group tends to anticipate, accelerate, and amplify price changes that have been set in motion by fundamentals. Being followers of momentum, this strategy often sees this group of traders buy into strength and sell into weakness, meaning that they are often found holding the biggest long near the peak of a cycle or the biggest short position ahead of a through in the market.
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The instrument(s) referenced in this content may be issued by a partner, from whom Saxo receives promotional fees, payment or retrocessions. While Saxo may receive compensation from these partnerships, all content is created with the aim of providing clients with valuable information and options..